Keyword difficulty report - am I stupid??
-
Hi, Im a programmer but SEO newbie and I am trying out Moz Pro.
To be honest I feel really disheartened right now, I find the world of SEO very difficult and full of conflicting information.
Anyway, I am trying to get my head around the Keyword difficulty tool in order to determine what keyword I want to go after and what I would need to do in order to outrank the competitors.
The website with the highest PA, most external links to the domain (4000 versus around 80-90), the most linking root domain and the best on page optimasations ranks nr 5.
The website that ranks 1 is the only one with good social signals.
All of the websites has the keyword in the page title.
What am I missing? This makes no sense to me. Is this Keyword tool reliable?
VERY grateful for any help from you guys..
/Emma
-
Hi Emma,
I feel your frustration. Unfortunately, we don't know all the ways in which Google's algorythm works, although we have a pretty good idea of many pieces of the puzzle.
Even the highest correlated metric we know of, PageAuthority, only has a correlation of about 0.35 (1.00 being a perfect correlation). Pretty good for SEO, but in the real world it's not the best correlation.
So the factors in the keyword difficulty tool are known ranking influences, but it's impossible to incorporate all 200+ ranking signals (some known, some unknown) into a single tool. Instead, the best way to use the tool is to use it to try to find out exactly why a page ranks above another. Is it over-optimized? What is it about those social signals that help? Are the links from relevant sources? Has the site been penalized?
Yeah, it's conflicting and confusing. In truth, the first 80% of all SEO is pretty standard: Create good content, make sure it's accessible by Search Engines, Follow best SEO practices, market it smartly, get links, repeat. Do this well and you'll win most of your battles. The remaining 20% gets hard, and if we think about it too much, we sometimes waste our time.
Regardless, the best strategy, in my opinion, is not to go after 1 keyword, but 100s at a time using a long-tail strategy. I wrote about it in more detail here: http://moz.com/blog/how-to-rank If you're just starting out, or even experienced, it's the best way to go.
-
If you're running PA as a number, be sure to look at the www version of the domain. Some tools neglect that critical component and will display the non-www version's PA.
You are entirely right, there are many conflicting stories within the educational side of SEO. Coupled with the fact that it changes dramatically over time, you have to stick to several trusted sources (like Moz!) and focus on what is happening right now. Other than going through the SEO Guide for Beginners and Google's SEO Starter Guide.
Last count, there were 250+ ranking signals.. looking at 4-5 is usually enough to gain some insights to why sites/pages rank the way they do. If those 4-5 signals aren't telling you the story, you simply have to look deeper.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is it a bad idea to hyphenate keywords?
Hello, my understanding was that Google reads hyphens in keywords as spaces, but if that's accurate how come keywords with hyphens that I research with Keyword Explorer — for instance, hospital-acquired infections — rank lower when I include the hyphen? If the hyphen hurts SEO, do I have to remove them all from the blog or page in question? Removing hyphens means a blog or page will have punctuation errors, which is irritating to an editor, but I don't want to sacrifice the effectiveness of keywords, either. Thanks, in advance, for your response!
Keyword Research | | SallieJ0 -
Secondary related keywords
Hi, Let' say one of the topics I want to talk about is "wine tasting2. I do a search in the keywords tool and I find related keywords such as "wine tasting chicago" and all the words that I find do not apply to me because I do "wine tastings in Bordeaux". How do I deal in a situation like that ? Can I type in the keyword tool "wine tasting bordeaux" even though my topic is wine tasting ? I took "wine tasting" but I could apply that to the word "chateaux" where none of the related keywords apply to me. I run into issues when the topics are "large". The other question I have is still about "wine tasting" if I find secondary related keywords that apply to me such a "wine tasting in bordeaux", "wine tasting cellars" do I still need to add in my content the word "wine tasting" by itself in addition to the 2 related keywords or can I just only put the 2 related keywords ? Thank you,.
Keyword Research | | seoanalytics0 -
Keyword research tools
So I went to a panel a while back that said Wordtracker is basically useless. I'm not using it as an end-all, be-all, but more for insights and context. Do you agree with that statement? The hosting company provides a keyword research tool, so I wasn't sure how seriously to take it. Have you guys been using Bing for the search data previously provided by Google's Keyword Research Tool? Do you find that to be a viable resource? Thanks.
Keyword Research | | SSFCU0 -
How can I get a list of keywords related to my specific keyword?
With a keyword such as 'vacant land,' how can I find related keywords?
Keyword Research | | Jeraldine0 -
Ranking for more keywords - Noob question
Hi, I've noticed recently that our site is ranking for a fraction of the keywords that our competitors are ranking for. In terms of increasing the number of keyword rankings per page would it simply be a case of adding optimised copy to each page? Thanks, Dan
Keyword Research | | Sparkstone0 -
Is there an ideal ratio of keyword difficulty to search volume?
I used the keyword research tool to pull data on potential keywords, the report returns a percentage to represent the competition and difficulty of a keyword. Is there an ideal ratio of percent difficulty to search volume
Keyword Research | | AdviceElle0 -
Local Keyword Strategy
Good morning! I'm working on building out a new website for a regional insurance agency specializing in auto insurance for high risk drivers (ex. Tickets, Accidents, Dui's, etc.). Due to the competitive nature of our industry, I believe it is best to focus on very localized long tail keywords, instead of broad terms I don't have any chance of ranking for. Our keyword research indicates that there is an opportunity to optimize and potentially rank for keywords that include geographic modifiers for towns and cities within a roughly 50 mile radius. The problem is, there is only so much you can say about auto insurance. On the one hand, I would like to have individual landing pages for each keyword phrase. On the other hand, I don't want to look manipulative to Google or hurt user experience by creating a bunch of pages with relatively similar content. Can anyone offer some advice on how I can structure the site/content to optimize for each geographic modifier without having lots of pages that are very similar? Thank you!
Keyword Research | | matthewbyers0 -
Google keyword tool [exact match]
Hey there, I'm trying to work out what my next big course to run will be. I want to know if my technique is a good gauge of popularity. I'm using Google's keyword tool specifically for New Zealand. I'm typing in a course topic e.g Photoshop Courses and looking at the exact match results to see if there might be a market for that course. Broad match seems to offer up a lot more numbers but seem a bit vague. Am i right to think 'After Effects Training' wouldn't be a popular course as it returns a (<10) local monthly result while 'Photoshop Courses' might be ok as it has a (46)? **I'd appreciate any insight. ** Dan
Keyword Research | | danielfromnz
- the Adobe Trainer0